But so what if their Afro-tribal-electro-twee-pop is indeed all sugar and no roughage; is it a crime to make Annuals look like they were actually ahead of their time? No, but all of the above means essentially little since every time Graham Ulicny opens up his throat, you just wanna yell “this is all your fault!” at the nearest .jpeg of Panda Bear and Avey Tare. I mean, it really is: I’ve always considered Merriweather Post Pavilion to be The Soft Bulletin of its decade and 10 years ago, the Reptars of the indiesphere sported a mewling, no-attack whine decked out by saturated synth strings and drums redlining with distortion. But Animal Collective understood the relationship between form and function, and the visceral shrieking of their earlier work was meant as a conveyance for the primal, occasionally unspeakable urges contained therein. But despite attempts at lyrical heft detailing a too-vague sexual awakening (“Sebastian”) and an encomium for a friend (“Ghost Bike”), Ulicny undermines himself on a second-by-second basis by finding no lyric that can’t be subjected to at least six different forms of contortion regardless of its content. Is there any reason for a line such as “Daniel left you for another boy/ Indeed he did you like a windup toy/ Oh why-o, why-o” to be sung like you’re trying to one-up Dave Longstreth in a vocal game of H.O.R.S.E.? I mean, if you’re going to stuff a song called “Orifice Origami” with four octaves of goosed-up pitch exaggeration and reserve your most strangulated affectations to deliver the title of “Please Don’t Kill Me”, does that mean you have all the self-awareness in the world or absolutely none at all?
Reptar: Body Faucet | Album Reviews | Pitchfork
Ian Cohen smacking down on cruddy bands is one of music writing’s great pleasures, but I’m posting this here for the Animal Collective thing. I went through college listening to Feels too, but man am I sick of hearing new bands try to sound like them! (This maybe goes along with the other thing I said about weirdness.) I sense in a lot of indie bands these twin desires for a) credibility derived from being perceived as ‘experimental’ or ‘avant garde’ and b) amassing a large-but-‘savvy’ audience with pop songs. Animal Collective have done pretty well navigating those impulses, so it’s only natural that young artists would seek to replicate their formula. Sonically, though, nobody with half an ear is fooled. To me it suggests that a lot of these people are thinking about how to be in a successful band instead of how to make distinct, interesting music and that’s really sad.
A Shot of Jamieson, Episode 3 - Sean Nyffeler
Episode 3! Let’s do this!
My guest for tonight’s show is Sean Nyffeler, a.k.a popcornnoises. We discussed his move from Wordpress to Tumblr and entry into the music writing community (with help from a previous guest), the role of contrarians and our respect for them, and bridging the gap between virtual friendships and real-life friendships with Tumblr pals. There are a few stretches of garbled speech, but nothing is rendered incomprehensible. I’m considering moving to South Korea or Hong Kong just for high-quality Skype connections for these podcasts.
As always, please holler at me if you have questions, comments, concerns, or are interested in appearing on A Shot of Jamieson. Thanks for listening!
For anyone interested in listening to me be genuinely uncool.
Really, though, this was fun! Hopefully I come off sounding likable and not too-(anything). I recommend having a chat with Jamieson whenever you get a chance.
Source: jamiesoncox
Standing in Webster Hall right now, with a very expensive Budweiser in my hand, it’s clear to me that The Men enjoy making music more than just about anyone at the moment.
As a companion to his Underscore piece on the history of Quiet Storm, writer Eric Harvey compiled this 104-song playlist of essential slow jams, from the Delfonics, to the Isley Brothers, to Smokey Robinson, to Anita Baker, to Maxwell, and much more.
This piece is fascinating and I’ve been revisiting the playlist ever since Harvey posted an early version of it on Tumblr at the end of 2011. Anecdotally: growing up in Florida means getting used to summer afternoon rainstorms. In July and August you can practically set your watch by them. The quote from Smokey Robinson’s autobiography resonated with me: “I heard distant thunder, smelled the air just before the rain, saw lightning streak across the sky, felt the winds blow.” Just the other day I was saying how I always love that before-and-after rain smell and how it conjures strong childhood memories in me. Now I’m working on mentally stringing those sensations together with these songs.
So anyway, can we go ahead and have this be the Summer of Quite Storm?
(via marathonpacks)
Source: Spotify
Hidden Tracks?
I did not download/listen to the leak/NPR-preview of Bloom, I waited until it came out yesterday and I bought it with money, so I haven’t had the months that many folks have to let it sink into the back of my brain. So far I like it more with each play.
Something about “Irene” bothers me, though. Not the song itself, but the fact that the track is 17 minutes long and, lo and behold!, it contains another secret song at the end after a few minutes of silence. I’ve suddenly realized how ridiculous the idea of trying to put a “hidden track” at the end of an album is these days. You take one look at the song lengths in your iTunes library and you either say to yourself (somewhat stupidly) ‘wow, Beach House made an epic 15 minute song!’ or you know immediately that there are in fact eleven songs on this album, not ten, and the band feels that they are pulling a fast one on you. A hidden track can no longer be hidden; it’s an insurmountable limitation of the digital format. Between this and the curmudgeonly interviews they’ve been giving as of late, I think we’re starting to see Beach House’s stubborn side emerge, and even as their output remains consistently enjoyable and engaging, I wonder how close they are to getting existentially stuck at the bottom of their own well.
Animal Collective - “Honeycomb” b/w “Gotham”
Somewhere along the line I lost track of the idea of ‘weirdness’ in music. The further you step back from it, the harder it gets to pin down what ‘conventional’ music is supposed to be and how anything can be called ‘weird’ in opposition/as an alternative. I used to be able to use Animal Collective as my own mile marker for weirdness, partly because their music used to be a lot more abrasive and partly because I was at a point in my life where I found a lot of personal value in feeling like I was roaming the edges of popular music, discovering hidden gems that people in the middle didn’t want or know about. Now I ask myself if the appeal of Strawberry Jam or Here Comes the Indian or Sung Tongs (I will probably always love Sung Tongs) wasn’t actually founded in cultural caché—if I started liking the music only after being drawn to what it might be like to be a person who liked this music instead of just engaging the music itself—and I can’t come up with a satisfying answer. If you don’t have your arms folded too tightly, Animal Collective can be great at freaking you out: the screaming, bashing, and ululating electronics and all that can sound just wild enough to be inhuman. But as the disorientation wears off and you begin to recognize the patterns in what they do, you end up wondering if it was really all that strange in the first place. What, if anything, are you left with after that?
I think in its own way Merriweather Post Pavilion was a shot at answering that question. The AnCo dudes filled out the bass, shined up the keys, wrote big, open melodies, and ta-dah!: they found a much wider audience and took a turn as big indie pop stars. There’s a well-worn road for bands (invented by critics and rock scribes, I’m sure) that starts out on those ‘weird’ edges and makes its way toward the ‘conventional’ center. Experiments are the beginning, pop songs are the end, and Animal Collective got about as far down that road as they’ll probably ever get. Maybe that’s why these new songs sound like an irresolute shuffling of feet: no real hooks to speak of, but not much to throw off the ears or astound the senses either. You step back far enough and the line between ‘weird’ and ‘conventional’ disappears, so anyone who’s spent a lot of time studying, following, and playing with that line is going to find themselves at a sudden loss of direction.
I am trying to go to this tonight and if you’re in New York I invite you to think about going too.
Hundred Waters are from Gainesville, FL (the town where I went to college) and it’s sort of an acquaintances/friends-of-friends scenario for me, so although I’m glad their album has been getting some good reviews and they’re starting to establish a fanbase beyond their local scene, I have a rule that I avoid writing about music made by people I know. It makes it too hard to be fair, critical, and/or not overly snobbish. I do enjoy North Highlands’ album quite a bit, though.
Anyway, I’ve been out of town for a few weeks and it’s been even longer since I’ve dragged my lazy haunches out to a show, so I think it’ll be fun.
